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ha ha lol. I think both of these topics have their own threads that go on ad infinitum. But I'll throw out my prediciton. In two or three years, both still will not be mainstream. The early adopters of electric shifting will realize that it didn't really add much to their cycling experience and may in fact have detracted a bit. They will also be saddled with electronic equipment that has been quickly improved upon (like computers) leaving their current stuff quite out of date. Then, rather than upgrade to the latest electric, they may opt to go back to mechanical.

As for disk brakes on road bikes, I see any potential market in the commuter end of things. Not in the high end Grand Tour type bikes. I would love a C59 disk setup for wet winter rides (set up with fenders etc)., but I will still opt for my rim brakes overall. In the winter I kit out my C50 with full fenders that have been dremelled and cut to fit as perfectly as possible. It still requires the use of no more than 23c tires however. And I hate that water and grit just keeps spilling from the fender lips right onto the rims. So disk brakes in this case would allow a nice fender set up and no worries about the water and grit dripping all over the rims while braking. But that's about it. And they would have to come out with some new lever design that enabled a hydraulic brake setup with mechanical shifting before I was interested. So far, Campy has shown little interest in disk brakes. And the Forumla 1 levers currently shown on a C59 disk setup are just butt ugly in my opinion and I think only work with electric.

I've ridden electric EPS stuff and so far I have no inclination to move to it. It also doesn't seem to be flying off the shelves of the shops at the moment and I don't think it's just because of the price difference. In fact, if electric were currently cheaper than mehcanical, I'd pay the premium for mechanical.

I never took drugs to improve my performance at any time. I will be willing to stick my finger into a polygraph test if anyone with big media pull wants to take issue. If you buy a signed poster now it will not be tarnished later. --Graeme Obree

And the Forumla 1 levers currently shown on a C59 disk setup are just butt ugly in my opinion and I think only work with electric.

yeah, agree they are ugly in my eyes too. i'm assuming the mainstream manufacturers will develop hydraulic parts inside the brake hoods so electronic and discs become entirely complimentary in my book.

it was looking at the disc braked C59 that set me thinking in the first place. carbon deep section rims could get even lighter and we'll get the brake feel and progression back. i do like the sound of that.

Maybe in wet conditions not dry. With proper brake pads, brake surface and calipers you do not need discs to stop any better than you do with regular calipers.

I never took drugs to improve my performance at any time. I will be willing to stick my finger into a polygraph test if anyone with big media pull wants to take issue. If you buy a signed poster now it will not be tarnished later. --Graeme Obree

I'm a long time mountain biker who got into road riding later. I run Dura Ace 7700 brakes which, while not the best of the best, I would think would be reasonable brakes. I can assure you it's far easier pulling my mtb up from 80km/h with Formula R1s than it is pulling the roadie up with DA rim brakes. BTW They're Mavic CXP33 rims on the roadie.

Then there's the modulation. Rim brakes generally have poor modulation when you compare to a decent hydraulic brake.

If you think there's little difference between the two I'd suggest having your disk brakes checked for contaminants.

I think they'll appear on the likes of the specialized roubaix, trek doman, cannondale synapse, etc in 2-3 years. For 2 reasons, MAMIL's buying the latest and greatest tech for sportives, and 'winter' bikes.

I also think we'll only see them either electronicaly shifted or with Hope style external resevoirs and master cylinders. I'm not a fan of BB7's, they were worse than hydro disks 10 years ago, and hydraulic disks have come on hugely in the meantime.

There was a guy shouting off on another thread about how he'd never adopt them untill they embraced F1 tech like carbon-cermaic disks and kevlar hoses. I'm pretty sure my hoses are poly-amide/kevlar (they're certainly not metal), and the latest shimano disks are built with an aluminium spider, then an aluminium disk sandwiched with steel to give it the frictional coeficients of steel and heat disipation of aluminium, not as light as the ashima air-rotors, but hugely more powerfull and don't fade. Carbon-cermaic brakes won't work on bikes, they rely on being very hot, fine for doing laps of a track in a car weighing 1ton+slwing from 100-200mph every 5-20 seconds, useless on alp d'huez which has 14 corners and plenty of time to cool them down in between slowing 65kg of cyclist from 70mph, magura venti rotors or shimano's saint/zee finned rotors make better sense, ignore hope's V2's as this is weight weenies and they weigh almost double!

I'm a long time mountain biker who got into road riding later. I run Dura Ace 7700 brakes which, while not the best of the best, I would think would be reasonable brakes. I can assure you it's far easier pulling my mtb up from 80km/h with Formula R1s than it is pulling the roadie up with DA rim brakes. BTW They're Mavic CXP33 rims on the roadie.

Then there's the modulation. Rim brakes generally have poor modulation when you compare to a decent hydraulic brake.

If you think there's little difference between the two I'd suggest having your disk brakes checked for contaminants.

I have campagnolo record, campagnolo nucleon rims (one of many wheel sets with machined brake surface), kool-stop brake pads. The pads are slightly toed in, the calipers are set so that the pads will start to make contact with the rim in 1/16" of travel. The modulation is fine with the campagnolo levers if the brake cable is properly set (smooth action and is not sticking), and you are using a good brake pad with machined surface. Just my experience with my current set. I have no problems stopping from 50 mph. Maybe 60 mph might be a problem but there are no hills around here that I can reach that speed.

I never took drugs to improve my performance at any time. I will be willing to stick my finger into a polygraph test if anyone with big media pull wants to take issue. If you buy a signed poster now it will not be tarnished later. --Graeme Obree

I despise Di2 for road bikes. But yet think it is the greatest thing for TT bikes. I know many people think Di2for road is amazing, but most of those people only started riding in the last 2-3 years.

Disk brakes could become fairly mainstream. But I dread the change over (makes things a little more complicated). I find the biggest problem with stopping in wet conditions is my tires on the pavement - not the braking surface. I don't see disk brakes making a huge gain in this department.

Speaking of riding in the wet, I'll be honest: I've been caught out in rain storms (and sometimes hail) (and more often than both of those: snow storms) but only once have I intentionally went out for a ride during a rain storm from the start.

(I'm not counting commuting or mountain riding, only road)

Maybe riding in the wet is more likely for a commuter, and certainly more likely for a mountain/dirt ride... but for road, it doesn't happen often enough to justify the need for supremacy in wet-condition braking at the sacrifice of other things.

Maybe it's just me and the rest of you go out for rides during rain storms all the time.

for me alloy rims are fine. its specifically carbon rimmed bikes that would benefit so much more from disc brakes. there is alot of room for improvement in braking progression there, especially at low speed in the wet, but even in the dry too.

so it seems to me based on that, there are 3 dependency developments to discs and electronic gears becoming mainstream on road bikes (4 if you include UCI approval for road racing)

I have campagnolo record, campagnolo nucleon rims (one of many wheel sets with machined brake surface), kool-stop brake pads. The pads are slightly toed in, the calipers are set so that the pads will start to make contact with the rim in 1/16" of travel. The modulation is fine with the campagnolo levers if the brake cable is properly set (smooth action and is not sticking), and you are using a good brake pad with machined surface. Just my experience with my current set. I have no problems stopping from 50 mph. Maybe 60 mph might be a problem but there are no hills around here that I can reach that speed.

Indeed, and mountainbikes had no problems stopping with canti brakes, but if you've not ridden a new set of disk brakes recently then it's hard to get across how good they are, allong with suspension dampers it's one of the few things in mountainbiking that really has beeen hugely improved with each model cycle of the last 10 years (HT11 cranks might get an honourable mention, and geometry's gone through a coupple of revolutions, but gears have just added another gear every other model cycle) and IMO even the original hope C2's outperformed rim brakes by a margin.